THE PATH TO PARADISE
A FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA STORY
“enthralling”
— Publishers Weekly
Air Mail Best Books of 2023
Boston Globe Best Books of 2023
Amazon Editors’ Pick Best Biographies & Memoirs 2023
New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice 2024
Los Angeles Times Best Seller
Francis Ford Coppola is one of the great American dreamers, and his most magnificent dream is American Zoetrope, the production company he founded in San Francisco years before his gargantuan success, when he was only thirty. Through Zoetrope’s experimental, communal utopia, Coppola attempted to reimagine the entire pursuit of moviemaking. Now, more than fifty years later, despite myriad setbacks, the visionary filmmaker’s dream persists, most notably in the production of his decades in the making film and the culmination of his utopian ideals, Megalopolis.
Granted total and unprecedented access to Coppola’s archives, conducting hundreds of interviews with the artist and those who have worked closely with him, Sam Wasson weaves together an extraordinary portrait. Here is Coppola, charming, brilliant, given to seeing life and art in terms of family and community, but also plagued by restlessness, recklessness and a desire to operate perpetually at the extremes.
As Wasson makes clear, the story of Zoetrope is also the story of Coppola’s wife, Eleanor Coppola, and their children, and of personal lives inseparable from artistic passion. It is a story that charts the divergent paths of Coppola and his co-founder and onetime apprentice, George Lucas, and of their very different visions of art and commerce. And it is a story inextricably bound up in the making of one of the greatest, quixotic masterpieces ever attempted, Apocalypse Now, and of what Coppola found in the jungles of the Philippines when he walked the razor’s edge. That story, already the stuff of legend, has never been fully told, until this extraordinary book.
“Sam Wasson’s supremely entertaining new book, “The Path to Paradise,” tracks the ups and downs, ins and outs, of a remarkable career.”
“Of all that has been written about Francis Ford Coppola, this book most accurately captures the film director’s chaotic life. His career has been punctuated by episodes of transcendent joy and numbing depression, by spectacular successes (the launching of his company, American Zoetrope; the instant box-office success of The Godfather, a film he made because he needed the money) and crushing disappointments (American Zoetrope’s collapse; the failure of what’s arguably his most visionary film, One from the Heart). Coppola is a perfectionist, a dreamer, a taker of spectacular risks, a man who appears incapable of stopping until he’s made the movie he set out to make—even, as in the case of Apocalypse Now (whose filming Wasson covers in some detail), when he isn’t sure what the movie is about. Wasson has written a string of successful books about the entertainment business, including Fosse (2013), Improv Nation (2017), and The Big Goodbye (2020), but this one, based on a mixture of previously published sources and original interviews with filmmakers, including Coppola himself, might be his best so far. Rich in detail, it’s full of surprises and revelations, and impeccably researched and documented. For fans of books about moviemaking in general, and Francis Ford Coppola in particular, this is required reading.”
“A vivid biography of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola and his production company, American Zoetrope....A memorable portrait of an artist who has changed the cinematic landscape and whose work will endure.”
“Wasson’s immersive prose vividly recreates the circumstances of each shoot offering a complex portrait of an artist whose unwillingness to compromise cost him dearly. Movie buffs won’t want to miss this.”
“Mouthwatering....A sizzlingly vivid and compulsive new book....Wasson has a great journalist’s eye for telling details and a great stylist’s ear, washing the reader along on a torrent of prose that mirrors Coppola’s own unfailing energy. Gorgeous turns of phrase abound.”
“Before now, writing a biography of Francis Ford Coppola has been like aiming at a moving target….Wasson…has deftly judged the moment....The effect is like movie cross-cutting, vivid with changing event and contrast....That Coppola saw further than others into the future of film is argued persuasively…”
“A bold new book....Wasson’s one of the best at writing about the lives of artists.”
“The Path to Paradise puts you there, and shows how Coppola got so close to the sun….Wasson captures the extreme ups and downs with a combination of precision and imagination, often bringing an appropriately gonzo tone to the story.”
“Wasson’s getting pretty good at this, isn’t he? After entertaining us to no end in behind-the-scenes treats such as Fifth Avenue, Five A.M. (Breakfast at Tiffany’s) and The Big Goodbye (Chinatown)—not to mention a massive Bob Fosse bio, and a fine oral history of Hollywood, co-authored with the great Jeanine Basinger—we get this: an inside look at Francis Ford Coppola and his independent studio, Zoetrope. With great access to Coppola, Wasson gives us a portrait of one of our most important directors just as Coppola continues production for Megalopolis, his longest and perhaps greatest cinematic obsession. This book is a movie-lover’s feast.”
“Wasson’s account will hold immense appeal for any film buff interested in the era, as will the cast of Mr. Coppola’s peers, proteges and adversaries ranging from John Milius to Steven Spielberg and Michael Cimino. The already thick lore around the absolutely berserk production of Mr. Coppola’s Apocalypse Now gets an additional layer, but equally fascinating is the exploration of ambitious failures like 1981’s One From the Heart and big-budget flops like 1984’s The Cotton Club.”
“If you have any interest in film history and the remarkably fecund and thrilling era of American moviemaking in the ’70s, The Path to Paradise is a must read. It tells its tale without brakes, storming from one intense period of Coppola’s life to another, leaving you breathless at the end of every chapter. It is a fantastic whirlwind of a biography that will make you feel as if you just finished a truly amazing film about a truly amazing man who never takes no for an answer and still believes that dreams can change the world.”